Cedar Falls restaurant manager sentenced in illegal alien case

A man who helped manage a Cedar Falls restaurant that employed illegal aliens has been sentenced in federal court. Twenty-three-year-old Rigoberto Lopez-Ayala admitted that while employed as the manager of Julio’s Restaurant and Cantina in Cedar Falls, he knowingly supervised workers who were undocumented aliens who were paid in cash. He also hired at least one of the workers.

Lopez-Ayala was sentenced in federal court to two years probation and fine one-thousand dollars. The restaurant’s owners, Juan Lopez-Angel and Julio Zalapa-Urbina, were convicted of felony alien harboring. Lopez-Angel was sentenced to 15 months in prison, while Zalapa-Urbina was sentenced in absentia this week to 21 months in prison, after he apparently fled to his native Mexico.